About the opera
- Run time: 2hrs 35min, 2 intermissions
- Sung in: Italian
- Subtitles: English, Italian and other languages
- Opera house: Vienna State Opera
Tosca is a feverish drama about a volatile diva, a sadistic police chief, and an idealistic artist. Driven by Tosca's fiery temperament, the score is packed with stirring arias and duets. To keep pace with the action, Puccini's orchestration is stormier than anything he had written before.
Ticket information
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Vienna State Opera
Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna View in Google Maps
How to get there:
Subway: U1, U2, U4 to Karlsplatz
Trams: 1, 2, D, 62, 71 to Opernring
Music and Libretto
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was enormously popular in his lifetime and is generally regarded as the greatest Italian composer of the post-Verdi generation. An operatic composer with a most original gift for lyrical melody, Puccini possessed a masterful technical savoir-faire and an extraordinary sense of the theatre. Although he created only ten operas in a 40-year career, his mature operas remain a firm part of the operatic repertoire and are among the most popular operas ever written.
His third opera, Manon Lescaut, brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Together, they wrote Puccini's three greatest masterpieces: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). In 1910, the premiere of La Fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Puccini then composed a lighter piece, La Rondine, performed at the Monte-Carlo Opera. In 1918 Il Trittico premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. His last opera, Turandot, remained unfinished.
Puccini’s librettists Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906) and Luigi Illica (1857–1919) based their text on Victorien Sardou’s play La Tosca, which had enjoyed years of international success with the great actress, Sarah Bernhardt. It was a major feat of adaptation: the original’s five acts and twenty-two characters were reduced to three acts and nine characters in the completed opera.
February 2025
Conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi
Floria Tosca Sonya Yoncheva
Mario Cavaradossi Piotr Beczała
Baron Scarpia Ambrogio Maestri
Cesare Angelotti Attila Mokus
Mesner Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Spoletta Andrea Giovannini
Sciarrone Marcus Pelz
Ein Schließer Simonas Strazdas
May 2025
Conductor Marco Armiliato
Floria Tosca Aleksandra Kurzak
Mario Cavaradossi Roberto Alagna
Baron Scarpia Gabriele Viviani
